2028 / Non-Dialogue / 16:9 / B&W / Canada
An Ode to Snow
a film by Xin Liu
Snow is never still.
It drifts, melts, disappears, and returns.
Filmed over several years across Canada, China, and France, An Ode to Snow follows these quiet transformations through landscapes shaped by ice, water, wildlife, weather, and time. Rather than telling a story, the film remains with small changes that are easily overlooked, allowing these transformations to unfold in their own time.
The project began with snow. Over time, it quietly became something else. Each return to the same place revealed a different landscape. Every season carried its own rhythm. Slowly, the film became less about snow itself than about change, memory, and the quiet passage of time.
An Ode to Snow is less a film about snow than an invitation to spend time with it.
The project received research and development support from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2023.
An Ode to Snow is a feature-length experimental documentary, scheduled for completion in 2028.
Director’s Notes
Cinema is a practice of returning.
The first encounter is with the world itself.
The footage does not contain the encounter. It carries only a trace of it.
Cinema preserves traces, not experience itself.
The camera remembers what I have forgotten. I remember what the camera could not record.
To not look is sometimes part of seeing.
Editing is a second perceptual encounter with the world through its traces.
Editing does not invent relationships—it reveals those that already exist.
Cinema does not merely extend language—it extends perception.
Flow is not the absence of attention. It is attention without constant self-interference.
I withdraw so that the world has room to appear.
The finished film is only a trace of a much longer companionship.
